The European Commission has announced its adoption
of the technical specifications for a biometric passport. This will store
not only the picture of the holder’s face (which has electronically measured
characteristics) but also two fingerprints stored electronically on a chip.
Experts say data security is unbreakable. Only the electronic passport
reader, they say, can retrieve this data. It will be compared with the
face and the fingerprints of the holder as he or she passes through the
border control. The reader-machines do not store and register data, they
say, therefore personal data is safe.

The experts may congratulate themselves on the
technical advance. But many people find it repugnant to have their fingerprints
taken. For them only criminals have their fingerprints taken. Forcing the
whole population to have their fingerprints taken makes them feel morally
suspect. The Commission Vice-president Franco Frattini, however, says he
is ‘particularly proud’ that about this ‘key step forward to render passports
of EU citizens more secure and reliable.’ The harmonized introduction
of biometric identifiers in EU passports will also ensure that the identity
of the holder can be easily established and will protect against identity
fraud. Placing intimate personal details into the hands of anonymous officials
requires trust. In a democracy trust is built after full consultation of
all levels of society and before such data is given to officials.

Let us examine the measure in the light of the
criteria that Robert Schuman set for European democracy. European laws
should, he said, ‘be in the service of the people and made in agreement
with it.’ Europe is based on both fundamental freedoms and service.

What service does the storage of intimate personal
data provide? It helps the airlines and the passport officers process the
traffic more quickly. If a passport is stolen it apparently makes identity
fraud more difficult by using two cryptic keys necessary for reading it.
Such sophistication makes the trade in false passports more difficult.

European passport and libertyIn the historic debates on the European passports
in the 1940s and 1950s, the main criteria were to make travel more easy,
reduce governmental blockage at borders and to give people a feeling of
belonging to a Community or union of sovereign democracies. In short to
recuperate lost liberties. Any changes in the passport regime should be
judged according to how it increases people's liberty.

Before the First World War people could enter
and leave most foreign countries without a passport. We have still not
regained this level of mutual trust. A passport was originally granted
by countries at war as the means to assure the protection of persons and
property. Even during European wars, scientists of belligerent powers were
able to meet. Passports should not be preserved as an unhelpful symbol
of selfish exclusion.

The European founders wanted to regain these freedoms
and break down unnecessary barriers. They established the Council of Europe
in 1949. Schuman and the other founders set the ultimate goal: get rid
of passports. 'Why create a European passport,' asked Britain's Ernest Bevin. 'Wouldn't it be simpler and more efficient to eliminate all existing
passports?' The first efforts to make common passports were held up by
committees of national ‘experts on passports’. Italy's Count Sforza said
prophetically: 'What on earth are 'passport experts'? If you put administrative
people who make them inside a committee, you will never solve the problem.
They will show that it is impossible to get rid of passports!' Sure
enough, it reached a bureaucratic logjam. Then some enlightened politicians
including Belgium’s Paul-Henri Spaak insisted that the technocratic horse
should not be leading the political riders. ‘Once democratic politicians
have decided that something must be done, experts have the duty to find
the means to do it. If they raise technical objections, they must then
find the remedies.’ However the committee of experts had started complicating
matters which both ministers and parliamentarians had just succeeded in
simplifying. 'Passport experts' became guardians of this technocratic heritage.

The real costToday the Commission estimates that the introduction
of these new passports will cost the citizen multiple times the price of
the present ones. In the EU the cost of traditional passports vary from
20 euros in Spain to 120 euros in Denmark. The Germans have introduced
only the first stage of the new passports (without the fingerprints). The
cost of German passports has more than doubled from 26 euros to 59. The
second stage raises the cost even higher. Why national prices should vary
so much is another question.

Any move to serve the citizens with the
new passports is welcome. But what will be the advantage to the citizen
of expensive electonic passports? How will they serve him or her? Although
civil servants at the borders are also there to serve, making the life
easier for officials at a high cost to the citizen is not what Schuman
meant by serving the people. Is Europe's goal for passports still their
programmed elimination? Who has spoken on this policy?

If even half of the European population need and
have to buy the new passports it will cost tens of billions of euros. That
is like an extra tax, restricting travel, commerce and human contact. This
democratic debt has to be justified by a bonus for democracy, service and
liberty. Where is it?

SecurityWill the new passports provide extra security
against terrorism? It is always easy for governments to cry ‘Terror’ and
bring in measures that do not actually help. If terrorists come from rogue
States then it is unlikely that any fancy passport electronics will help.
Governments with their multi-million-euro budget can always buy the technology
on black markets, by theft, bribery or corruption. Even friendly States
have entire departments that arrange false passports for intelligence operatives.
Does anyone expect that none of the countries that wish to spy on the EU,
take its commercial or military secrets or do it mischief will not get
the technology to make the new high-grade passports and forge them for
their own use?

Non-democratic countries have no compunctions.
It would be invidious to go into details on the nature of how democracies
themselves do this same counterfeiting job. Suffice it to recall the case
of France, a country that prides itself in the rights of man. It used fake
passports of Switzerland, a neutral country that takes a totally non-aggressive
posture, to disguise its secret agents. These ‘Swiss’ passport-holders
entered on New Zealand territory, another small, peaceful country. The
agents then destroyed a ship about to protest nuclear bomb tests elsewhere,
thus killing one person. If Swiss passports are not safe from other democracies,
what passports are safe from hostile countries?Major effort will be made by outside countries
to provide their agents with EU passports. Once cracked, and a fake is
produced, the road is open for criminals and other elements to buy, steal
or produce such counterfeits. The long history of passport frauds tells
us that it is not the passports themselves that are so often copied but
authentic passports are sold by corrupt officials or modified for ready
buyers. Governments have lost sight of the original purpose of passports.
They too often deal with symptoms rather than the source of the problem,
whether passport thefts, immigration problems or crime.

Further, terrorists are now too often ‘home-grown’.
They do not need passports as they are already EU citizens. If the main
reason to introduce the passports was to prevent terrorism, then it means
that 99.9999 percent of the population is paying a considerable amount
extra for a security service that is here irrelevant and proved to be futile.

Agreement of the peopleWhat of the second part of Schuman’s criteria
for a democracy? Was this passport brought in with the full ‘agreement
of the people’? The decision of the ministers was not taken under the full
Community rules of democratic consultation. Instead experts decide under
an inter-governmental deal involving ‘comitology’. It is designed to escape
even the usual reduced democratic controls of the EU. No Parliament agreement
is necessary. The Consultative Committees are not asked for an Opinion
either. It remains one sided. Ministers have not even agreed to Commission
proposals to protect citizens’ rights about how to prevent the misuse of
the fingerprint information. Ministers maintain that the personal data
is not stored. But it only takes a few moments reflection on how such a
system could be circumvented. One hopes that the experts have thought of
all the possibilities too. The weak point of any technocratic system is
that it neglects the human factor.

It is precisely the human factor that has been
left out of many technology-driven projects. Schuman stressed that democratic
politics must prevail over technocracy. Technocracy was Europe’s greatest
danger, he said. If the Parliament does not have its full impact on this
decision, how can it be in agreement with the people? Even more important
in the original treaties are the Consultative Committees such as the Economic
and Social Committee and the Committee of Regions. Today their members
are nominees of government ministers. Membership is agreed in ministers’
secret councils and chosen too often because of their party political cards.
Their members should, according to the treaties, be representative of civil
society. Patronage is not democratic representation. It is, as Schuman
put it, a counterfeit. ‘Nothing is easier for political counterfeiters
to exploit good principles for an illusion and nothing is more disastrous
than good principles badly applied.’

Consult the peopleThe Consultative Committees need to present legitimate
views of industries, services, unionists and all consumer groups in general.
It is these critical ‘interest groups’ that can really identify the unforeseen
consequences of each governmental decision. Experts in passports do not
always have a penetrating view about the complex, social and economic consequences
of high technology in all sectors and areas of Europe and what happens
when equipment goes wrong in unexpected circumstances. For many experts
it is sufficient to say that the equipment is 99.99 percent reliable. However
it is often the 0.01 percent that leads to expensive and embarrassing results.
For example, Ministers and experts had decades to contemplate a far simpler
case: the end of the Multi-Fibre Agreement. However, when they decided
to end it, it lead to what the tabloids called the ‘Bra wars’ when major
department stores found that their supplies of clothes from China and elsewhere
were blocked. If they had asked a properly representative consultative
committee, they would not only have saved millions of euros in extra costs
but avoided their own red faces.

Democracy involving full consultation should not
be a complication for ministers. It is usually the most efficient way to
proceed. It should be welcome.